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Syllable Division - Common Understanding.

Sunday, 23 December 2012 0

Syllable Word: A one syllable word is never divided. It has one or more letters but one vowel sound, and is produced by a single voice impulse.

VCV: When a single consonant comes between two vowels in a word, the word is usually divided before the consonant and the first vowel is long.

VCV: When a single consonant comes between two vowels in a word, the word is usually divided after the consonant and the first vowel is short.

Division Process: Cross off silent e (if there is one at the end). Mark the vowels V. Mark the consonants between the vowels C. Determine correct syllable pattern. Divide. Identify syllable types/vowel condition. Pronounce each syllable and blend the word. Have you divided correctly? Are there other possibilities? If yes, start over.

Prefix/Suffix: When a word has a prefix and/or suffix, the word is divided between the affix and the root.

Simple Ten Syllable Rules:
The top ten syllable rules will help students improve reading, pronunciation, and spelling accuracy. Applying these syllabication rules will also help readers identify prefixes, roots and affixes, which improves word identification.

Intonation

Friday, 21 December 2012 0


Intonation Patterns in English:

When we speak to each other, our voices tend to rise or fall in pitch over a part of an utterance. This rise or fall in pitch is known as intonation. Intonation is used mainly to indicate the speaker's attitude towards the listener or towards the topic.

Stress

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  1. Syllable Stress

    The emphasis that is given (through greater breath force) to any particular syllable in a word is known as stress. In all polysyllabic words, one of the syllables receives greater stress than the others. The syllable in a word which receives stress is called the stressed syllable. All other syllables are known as unstressed syllables. The stressed syllable is shown in many dictionaries, by a short vertical mark which is placed above and just ahead of the first letter or the first IPA symbol.
  2. Stress Shift

    The migration or movement of the stress from one syllable to another in related words is known as stress shift.
  3. Stress Variation

    Certain pairs of words like 'conduct', 'desert', 'object', 'present', 'rebel', etc have the same spelling but belong to different grammatical classes. Such words can be used as noun or verbs. However, there is a shift in stress in these words. When they are used as nouns, the stress is on the first syllable and when used as verbs, they are stressed on the second syllable.
  4. Stress Patterns in Compound Words

    In compound nouns, the stress is on the first part. (blackbird, greenhouse)
    In compound adjectives, the stress is on the second part. (good-natured, old-fashioned)
    In compound verbs, the stress is on the second part. (understand, overflow)
  5. Stress Pattern in Sentences (Sentence Rhythm)

    Sentences, like words, have stressed as well as unstressed syllables. Stress is put on words which give us the main information, while the words which are not important for meaning are left unstressed. This pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in sentences gives English speech its typical rhythm.

    English words can be divided into two categories: content words and structure words.

    Content words are usually stressed, while structure words are usually unstressed and reduced.

    Content words:
    - Nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs
    - Demonstrative pronouns
    - Question words in a question

    Structure words:
    - Pronouns, prepositions, articles auxiliary verbs and determiners.
  6. Stress-timed and Syllable-timed languages

    When the stressed syllables are close to each other, the rate of speaking slows down, but when the stressed syllables are far apart, the rate of speaking becomes faster.

    English is called a stress-timed language because the time taken to speak a sentence depends on the number of stressed syllables and not on the total number of syllables.

    Languages such as Hindi, Oriya, etc., on the other hand are called syllable-timed languages, because the time taken to go from one syllable to the next, whether stressed or unstressed, is always the same. The time taken to speak a sentence depends on the total number of syllables and not on the number of stressed syllables, as in English.

    English, therefore, has a very different rhythm from Indian languages. To an English ear, Indian languages have a sing-song rhythm (like the sound of chanting mantras), while to the Indian ear, English has a staccato rhythm (like the sound of a machine gun).
  7. Contrastive Stress in Sentences

    Stress is not always pre-determined, and can be moved from the normal position in a sentence. When stress is placed on other syllables, which do not normally take stress, special meanings can be created (mostly depicting the emotional state and intention of the  speaker).

Syllables

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A syllable is a cluster of sounds which forms either a complete word having a meaning
(example - red),or a part of it (example - the syllable 'ab', which forms part of the word 'absent').

Normally, each syllable contains only one vowel. Typically, this word is preceded as well as followed by a consonant - as in words such as 'red', 'cat', 'sad', etc. Here the vowel comes in the middle of the syllable.

A syllable in which there is a consonant in front of it as well as after it is represented by the formula CVC (where 'C' represents Consonant and 'V' represents Vowel).

However, a syllable can also have the structure CV or VC. It is also possible for a syllable to have the structure CCV or VCC.

It is possible to form new words from given words by adding extra syllables.

Words such as 'red', 'rod', 'bad', etc are said to be monosyllabic words, containing only one syllable.

The words that we have looked so far were monosyllabic words. But words can have two, three, four or even more syllables. Such words are called polysyllabic words.

Syllable Division:

Referring to an English dictionary, we can find all the polysyllabic words along with their meanings. They are split up into the syllables they contain. The syllable boundaries are usually shown by dots.

Consonants, Vowels and Diphthongs.

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The terms consonant, vowel and diphthong were used in referring to IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols. These terms describe different kinds of sound which are found in all languages.


  1. Consonants

    When we speak, a stream of air is forced out of the lungs, travels upwards through the throat and then passes out through the mouth and nose.

    Any sound that is produced by blocking the air stream from flowing out easily through the mouth is called a consonant.
  2. Vowels

    But when certain other sounds are produced such that there is no blocking of air stream in the mouth. The air stream passes out freely through the mouth and nose, such sounds are called vowels.
  3. Diphthongs

    In the pronunciation of some words, two vowels  combine together to form a single sound, which is called as a diphthong.

Why Indian speakers do have problems concerning proper pronunciation in English?

Sunday, 16 December 2012 0

Indian English has many a times been un-intelligible by the British listeners or the native Englishmen. The question is why? Indians have progressed a long way to achieve a long line of successes, then why not in English?

Variation in English pronunciation geographically.

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The pronunciation of a language varies every six miles because of geographical and cultural reasons. The speakers of one and the same language will vary in the standard of pronunciation on the basis of their standards of literacy and living. For example, a villager may speak a different variety from a man from the city.

Pronunciation of English also varies from one geographical entity to the other, from one country to another. There are marked and distinct phonetic features associated with English spoken in the English-speaking nations such as the U.K., the U.S.A., Canada and Australia. Even within the U.K., there are variations between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Received Pronunciation

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" Great prestige is still attached to this implicitly accepted social standard pronunciation ". It is often called "Received Pronunciation" to indicate that it is the result of social judgement and wide acceptance because of its use by the BBC announcers. It is basically 'Educated Southern British English'  and is the form of pronunciation generally described in books on the phonetics of British English and the one generally taught to foreigners.

RP (received pronunciation) today is no longer the exclusive property of a particular social class in England and is generally equated with the correct pronunciation of English. Regional forms of pronunciation continue to exist. Some young people, however, have begun to reject RP as they wish to challenge traditional authority in every form.

Some forms of regional pronunciation are firmly established in Britain. Some of them, particularly Scottish, are accepted throughout the country, while others - popular London speech, for instance are less acceptable. American pronunciation is now completely accepted in Britain. Speakers of RP now realize that their type of pronunciation is used by only a very small minority in the English speaking world..

Emergence of a Standard in English.

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The credit of making the East-Midland dialect standard English goes to Chaucer, the father of English poetry. While a standard form of written English has existed for hundreds of years, there has been even within England a great diversity in the pronunciation of people belonging to different regions and different sections of the community. One particular regional accent, however, has over the last five hundred years, acquired social prestige. It was the pronunciation of the southeast of England, particularly of the London region, to which this prestige was attached. It gradually lost some of the local characteristics of London speech and became the speech of the ruling class through the influence of the public schools in the nineteenth century. It thus got established as a 'class' of pronunciation throughout England and was recognized as characteristic of a social class rather than a regional pronunciation. Those who wanted social advancement had therefore to modify their speech to bring it neaeer the social standard.

Indian English is not always Intelligible to British listener.

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The main reasons of the un-intelligibility of Indian English to foreigners are:


  1. faulty pronunciation of the sounds of English
  2. replacements of English sounds by their Indian equivalents
  3. wrong accentual pattern
  4. leaving important words unaccented in connected speech
  5. faulty rhythmic patterns
  6. faulty division of a long utterance into a tone group
  7. wrong location of the nucleus or the tonic syllable in a tone group

Vowels in English.

Saturday, 8 December 2012 0

From our childhood days we are taught about the English alphabet consisting of the vowels and consonants. Despite of this many people are unable to properly pronounce the English vowels. So we center our discussion around the ' Vowel Sounds in English' .

Now, the first question is, what is a vowel ? In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language which is pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build up of air pressure at any point above the glottis.


IPA symbols chart

Saturday, 24 November 2012 0

The role and purpose of audience.

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It is the modern era and all of us are modern citizens. We find numerous news items depicting many debates, reality shows, concerts, etc where a huge crowd or audience is present. What does all this indicate? It indicates that the audience is very important in a communication process. In any kind of communication the role of audience is very significant.

When we communicate, our purpose is not what we want to do, instead it is what we want our audience to do as a result of reading what we wrote or listening to what we said. Thus it involves the audience. To communicate effectively that is to achieve the purpose we must adapt to the audience. Therefore it is very important that we know and understand our audience aptly.

Knowing the purpose and the audience helps the writer or speaker determine his or her strategy. The audience is largely heterogeneous; it consists of our jury, colleagues, friends and even probably our family. Heterogeneity in the audience gives the crowd various ways to react, understand and act accordingly.

Audiences vary. They can be small or large. They can be reasonably homogeneous in what they already know or in what they are interested in, or they can be very heterogeneous too. The speaker or writer must learn to distinguish whenever and however possible between the specialists and non-specialists. Specialists would want more details in the communication while the non-specialised would want the communication to be better interpreted for them to understand. Audiences can also be classified as primary and secondary. The primary readers are the people whom the writer or the speaker  targeted to communicate with specifically whereas the secondary audience consists of those whom the writer or the speaker did not target but has communicated with without his or her knowledge.

An effective communication however makes sense to all the categories or classes in which the audience can be divided and completes the communicator's motive to inform, entertain and persuade the audience according to his or her will.

ENGLISH - A non-phonetic language.

Friday, 23 November 2012 0

People mostly in the eastern hemisphere find it difficult to adapt to English. English although is considered a global language but people face many problems learning the language and speaking it correctly in the proper manner.

The main reason for this difficulty is that English is an non-phonetic language. The alphabets don't always relate to the same speech sounds. Hence it is the primary cause of difficulty. The pronunciation of English words do not follow the spelling and vice-versa.

English is an amalgam of many languages. It began as a Germanic derivative, however over the years, many words from different languages have been added including French, Spanish, Yiddish, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Dutch, etc.

The sounds that are common in German were common in Old English too, but those sounds dropped out over time. However the spelling did not change to reflect the new pronunciation.

Also the words that entered English from foreign languages sometimes kept their original spelling and pronunciation. This means that the sounds that are used in those words are foreign (non-English) sounds. In other instances, the foreign pronunciation was adopted to an English pronunciation but the foreign spelling was maintained. This resulted in a disconnection between the English sound and spelling, giving English the 'non-phonetic' adjective.  

Difference between general and business communication.

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GENERAL
BUSINESS
It contains a general message
It contains a technical message

It is mostly informal in style or approach

It is mostly formal

It does not follow a set pattern of communication

It follows a set pattern of communication

It is mostly oral

It is both oral and written

It does not involve use of any vocabulary or graphics part

It involves use of technical vocabulary, graphics and some more

Expression is based on general communication

Experience is based on business communication

It is applicable type

It is solution type

It talks about the process

It talks about the products

It is not used always for specific audiences

It is used always for specific audiences

Difference between spoken and written forms of communication.

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In our daily life we use both verbal and non-verbal features of communication. We use spoken and written forms of communications. There are many differences in between these two forms, they are as follows:

SPOKENWRITTEN
Spoken language is the principal objective or the principal form of communicationWritten form of communication is the graphical representation of spoken language

Spoken form is more comprehensible

Written form is less comprehensible

To establish the fact that anyone singing a song and we listening to it helps us memorize it easily

Writing cannot be reproduced in natural speech or a spontaneous speech easily

Speech is automatic habit in every state of human language learning

Writing follows the spoken language or speech

Spoken form is broken language as it never follows  the rules of grammar

Written form is a ruled governed system and is rigid about the grammatical rules

Spoken language can be used colloquially

Writing cannot be used colloquially



Why do people use gestures and facial expressions?

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From research it has been established that most of the communication i.e. at least 70% is done in non-verbal ways like gestures, postures, facial expressions, body language, etc.
Using gestures, postures, body language is an automatic habit of human beings to make more meaningful emphasization and to gain support and strength within himself or herself. Non-verbal features of communications are used to modify the verbal communication. That is exactly why we add non-verbal communication to our words knowingly or unknowingly when we interact using word with other individuals or people.


When communication takes place without words and language it is considered as non-verbal communication. This form of communication includes the internal stimuli of human beings. Other than spoken language using words, communication in writing, gestures, body language comprise the non-verbal category of communication.


Information overload and creating a balanced communication between given and new information.

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In the present day, information is available very abundantly. As a result of which today information overload is an increasing problem both in the workplace and the personal life in general. We must learn the process and procedure to deal with this problem effectively. Information overload means, the availability of huge amounts of information which is fed to the receiver as a result of which the person is unable to handle it effectively. It also describes a situation where one is so preoccupied that he/she is unable to cope up with the new or latest information available to him/her.

The phenomenon of information overload isn’t desirable. The usual results of information overload are fatigue, disinterestness, boredom, etc. Under these circumstances further communication is not possible. Very often vital information gets mixed up with too many irrelevant activities and therefore goes ignored by the person or the receiver.


The term ‘information overload’ was first used by a futurologist called Alvin Toffler (1970) who predicted that rapid increase in the amount of information produced will eventually cause problems for the people and lead them towards confusion. The main factors responsible for information overload are widespread access, the internet or the world wide web and canty sending of mails to large number of people, available channels of incoming information and contradictions and inaccuracies in the available information and also the lack of knowledge for comprising and processing different kinds of information. One who is able to deal with the above factors is easily capable of tackling problems caused due to information overload efficiently.

Information gap principle and its use to create better rapport between the speaker and the listener.

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An information gap is a situation in which there is a communication between two or more people and where information is known to only some of the people present. Early adopters of technology in the field of education used to phrase ‘information gap’ to describe families who could afford a computer at home in contrast to those who could not.

The ‘information gap principle’ is a method of communication development in a laboratory class by the teacher not predominantly communicating with any student directly. Information gap principle is a variation of a surprised activity called as information gap. Language students should be involved in as many situations as possible where one of them has some information and the other doesn’t have. But one has to get it from the other who does have it to breach the information gap between the participating students in the activity based classrooms.


Again by the information gap, the person who exchanges something that the other doesn’t know like the teacher to student question ‘what is the colour of your dress?’, usually this question doesn’t involve any information gap as the teacher and the student know the same information while the friend to friend question ‘where are you going for lunch?’ does involve an information gap because the asking person presumably does not know the answer. This presence and absence of information is called as information gap principle. Therefore to deal with the principle in practice there is necessity of pair practice on variety of different language skill drills. To make the students practice the information gap principle, to encourage them to find whatever information that they do not have or possess with them they should interact between each other to improve their communication skills in the language.

Effective communication is a continuous and cyclic process.

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All of us communicate with a purpose. It may be to inform, share an idea, persuade or entertain. Whatever may be the purpose, the components involved in the communication process remain the same. And as long as there is coordination and interdependence among the components of communication there is every possibility that our communication will turn out to be effective.
The process of communication starts with the sender encoding the idea and sending it to the receiver via a medium or a channel. The receiver’s job is to decode the encoded message and extract information from it and also understand the message. After understanding it the receiver needs to provide a feedback to the sender indicating that he/she has understood the message.
Consider the communication process as shown below:






The diagram above conveys to us that the effective communication is a cyclic and continuous process. Communication can be considered to be effective when the receiver understands the message sent by the sender and gives a feedback to the sender. Effective communication also ensures that the message sent by the sender is not distorted in any manner while it is transmitted. Effective communication as shown in the figure above conveys us that, it is initiated from the sender and ends at the sender too indicating that effective communication is a cyclic and continuous process.

Communication requires that the communicating parties share an area of communicative commonality.

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Communication requires a sender, a message, a channel or medium and a recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender’s intent to communicate at the time of communication, thus communication can occur across vast distances in time and space. Communication requires that the communicating parties share an area of communicative commonalities. The communication process is complete once the receiver has understood the message of the sender.

Communication is the flow or exchange of information within people or a group of people. A variety of verbal and non-verbal communication describes the process of conveying meaning in the form of non-word messages. Research shows that majority of communication is non-verbal.
All communications, intentional or unintentional have some effect. This effect may not be always in communicator’s favour or as desired by him or her. Communication that produces the desired effect or result is effective communication. It results in what the communicator wants. Effective communication generates the desired effect, maintains the effect and increases it. It serves the purpose for which it was planned or designed. Possible purposes might be to generate action, inform, create understanding or communicate a certain idea etc. Effective communication also ensures that the message is not distorted during the communication process.
Communication is the key factor in the success of any organization. There are certain barriers to it. People often feel that communication is as easy and simple as it sounds. While it is true on one level, what makes it complex, difficult and frustrating are the barriers that come in its way. Barriers to successful include message overload and message complexity. Physical barriers are often due to the nature of the environment. System design faults refer to problems with the structures or systems placed in an organization. All these factors affect effective communication adversely and hence there is a necessity for communicative commonality.

Communication through English has a tremendous global utility and is literally inescapable. Its major fields of application and utility.

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The world isn’t the big place it used to be anymore, it has turned into a very small place with the introduction of various transportation and communication technologies. With the growth in technology and globalization people of the different states and countries adopted English to communicate with each other without any difficulty. Because English is so widely spoken, it has often been referred to as a ‘world language’, the lingua franca of the modern era, and while it is not an official language in most countries, it is currently the language most often taught as a foreign language. It is by international treaty, the official language to aeronautical and maritime communications. English is an official language of the United Nations and many other international organizations including the International Olympic Committee. English is the language most often studied as a foreign language in the European Union, by 89% of the school children, ahead of French at 32%, while the perception of the usefulness of foreign languages among Europeans is 68% in favour of English, ahead of 25% for French. Among some non-English speaking European Union countries, a large percentage of the adult population claims to be able to converse in English – in particular 85% in Sweden, 83% in Denmark, 79% in the Netherlands, 66% in Louxemberg and over 50% in Finland, Slovenia, Austria, Belgium and Germany.

Books, magazines and newspapers written in English are available in many countries around the around the world, and English is the most commonly used language in the sciences with science citation index reporting as early as 1997 that 95% of its articles were written in English even though only half of them came from authors in English speaking countries.
The increasing use of the English language globally has led a large impact on many languages, leading to language shift and even language death, and to claims of linguistic language imperialism. English itself has become more open to language shift as multiple regional varieties feed back into the language as a whole.


So English has become an inevitable language in today’s world.

Communication VS Communications

Thursday, 22 November 2012 0

Communication is the exchange of information among individuals. It is the process whereby information is enclosed in a package and is channeled and imparted by a sender to a receiver via some medium.

Communications is the system used for sending and receiving messages. Communications also include marketing, advertising and broadcasting.

Literally Commmunication. Powered by Blogger.